Monday, 10 March 2008

Fighting the Fear...buying C, FRE, LEH

Financial stocks are taking a BEATING today, following Bear Stearns liquidity rumours, taking the stock down the most since the 1987 crash, and battering other financial stocks. Lehman also out saying they are laying off 5% of their staff globally.

Well, I like to step in to buy when fear seems high, so today could be the day. I just paid $20.00 (-4%) for Citigroup (C), $17.27 (-12%) for Freddie Mac (FRE) and $44.00 (-5%) for Lehman Brothers (LEH). I was also going to buy some Bear Stearns, but it was 5-6% off the lows of the day so I'll just wait that one out. I bought around $10k worth of each stock.

Whilst the fundamentals are still clearly disgusting for the financial sector, when fear is high you can sometimes get great entry levels, so looking for a good near-term bounce in all of these, purely on technicals. Lehman seems a decent one though, I still think them and Goldman are pretty well run banks, so will probably whether all but a complete financial meltdown (something I am definitely not ruling out).